While the public lauds the president’s performance killing Bin Laden, he got no overall bounce in a new Newsweek/Daily Beast poll. Also: Obama vs. Bush on terror and Obama vs. Trump in 2012.

How much overall boost did President Obama get from the capture of Osama Bin Laden? None, according to an exclusive Newsweek / Daily Beast poll encompassing 1,200 American adults, conducted in the two days immediately before the president’s Sunday announcement about the terrorist leader, and then the two days immediately after.

Specifically, Americans like the way he handled the situation, giving him strong results in strength and decision-making (55 percent now term him a strong leader overall, and 63 percent do so in the area of terrorism). Yet he did not get any overall bump in terms of approval rating, or electoral support. His approval rate was unchanged—48 approve, 49 disapprove, both before and after. There was also no statistical change in whether Obama deserves reelection—40/48 before, 39/49 after.

This doesn’t seem quite fair for Obama. If the mission had failed he would have gotten blamed by everyone, s0 it’s only fair to give him some credit now. But, as the article mentions, people are probably more fixated on the poor economy right now.

On the other hand, it seems to have taken him sixteen hours to have made up his mind to go ahead. This would seem to be a “no-brainer” but then he had to have been concerned about the risks

GENEVA, May 3 (Reuters) – The United Nations’ top human rights official called on the United States on Tuesday to give the U.N. details about Osama bin Laden’s killing and said that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law.

But Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the al Qaeda leader, killed in a U.S. operation in Pakistan, had committed crimes against humanity as self-confessed mastermind of “the most appalling acts of terrorism”, including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America.

It was always clear that taking bin Laden alive was likely to be difficult, she said, noting that U.S. authorities had stated that they intended to arrest him if possible.

“This was a complex operation and it would be helpful if we knew the precise facts surrounding his killing. The United Nations has consistently emphasised that all counter-terrorism acts must respect international law,” Pillay said in a statement issued in response to a Reuters request.

Is that some kind of joke? The UN has no moral authority whatever on the issue of human rights.